Singing Down the Spirits: an exploration of music, shamanism, and the physics of sound.

One of the most ancient and universal ideas in the world-views of Mankind is that belief that creation began in and has its roots in sound. In Christian thought, this idea finds its clearest expression in the opening line of the Gospel of John that says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.” Both Islamic and Jewish traditions expound this creed in their alphabets; the first letter of both is the ‘Aleph in Hebraic/’Alif in Arabic. This letter, in the philosophies of both religions, comes first because it represents the position of the mouth before it begins to speak; in other words, it is the sound God made before He spoke creation into existence. As such it also establishes the pre-eminence of sound over sense, feeling over meaning. But by this I mean not simple emotional feeling, but something more trans-personal, what Islam calls ‘Zawq’, or ‘taste.’ This refers to a certain transcendent state, a rapture one falls into when touched by poetry or music and is ‘transported’ out of one’s self; a visionary trance, often involving synesthesia, the experiencing of one sense in terms of another.

Music is still a very popular meditation aid, as evidenced by the popularity of ‘meditation music’, New Age music, CDs of Gregorian and Buddhist chant, and so on. Throughout the world, though, the music used for ritual and healing purposes often sounds radically different, not at all what we Moderns typically consider ‘relaxing.’ Nonetheless, these musics possess demonstrable therapeutic effects, and the jarring or unsettling quality of them is integral to that. They upset in order to calm, and the manner in which they achieve this illustrates the relationship between sound and matter.

To understand how this relationship works, we’ll start by examining the work of two Western scientists, both pioneers in the study of music and physics.
The first was Ernst Chladni, a Hungarian scientist, who in 1787 published “Discovery of the Theory of Pitch.” In this book he explained how, when he took a metal disc covered with sand and ran a violin bow along the edge, the vibrations caused the sand to form geometrical patterns. When he put his finger on certain node points the pattern changed, just like stopping a guitar string at a different fret changes the note. The higher the pitch of the sound, the more complex the pattern created. Furthermore, the results were reproducible; that is, the same pitch brought out the same pattern repeatedly. He toured Europe giving demonstrations of his discovery, including a command performance to Napoleon, but after his death he was largely forgotten by the general public. His research, though, is still used by violin and cello makers to see the vibration patterns on the wood faces of their instruments, and thus where the wood needs to be thinner or thicker for optimal tone.

In the mid-twentieth century a Swiss scientist named Hans Jenny came across Chladni’s work and expanded on it. He made a device called a ‘tonoscope’ that used electronic frequencies delivered to a membrane, like a drum head, to achieve the same results as Chladni, but he was able to control the frequencies more precisely. (See fig. 1.) He then found a way to transfer a live human voice directly to the membrane, and thus was able to see the effect of a changing melody upon the substance. This resulted in patterns that seemed to dance across the membrane, sometimes in very ordered movements, sometimes chaotically.

Perhaps the most significant of his findings came when he had his vocalist sing different vowel sounds, specifically the pronunciations in the Hebrew and Sanskrit languages; the vowel-sounds ‘drew’ the sand into the very shapes of those letters from those alphabets! (See fig. 2.)

He realized that this phenomena gave concrete support to the ancient claim of the sacredness of these languages; that is, the prayers and chants in these languages aided in direct communication with the Divine because they actually affected the physical world, shaping it in accordance with a literally Divine Harmony. Curiously, however, modern languages like German or English, or even Latin, did not produce the same effect.

Some frequencies also gave exact replicas of various Yantras, most notably the Sri Yastra, considered one of the most profound of the yantric diagrams. (See figs. 3 & 4.) In its pictorial form, the Sri Yastra is held to be a gateway of sorts to other states of consciousness, or other realms of Being; essentially, other dimensions. A Yantra is a geometrical drawing, typically mathematically complex and very precise, used as a meditation tool in certain branches of Hinduism and Buddhism. The meditator visualizes or examines a particular yantra while chanting one of various formulas, Om Mani Padme Hum being the most famous one, or simply the syllable AUM. The diagram in conjunction with the chant aids the aspirant in harmonizing the left brain and right brain functions along with the chakras, or energy centers in the body. This practice is supposed to enable the aspirant to access ‘higher states of consciousness.’

Most, if not all, spiritual traditions consider the seat of the soul to be located in the pineal gland, a small gland tucked away at the base of the human brain, just above where the spinal chord starts. Though the purpose of the pineal gland has long been an enigma to Western scientists, research in the past 50 years or so has cleared away some of these clouds of unknowing and validated some of what was regarded as superstition. This gland is supposedly the entry and exit point of the mysterious thing called ‘the soul’; it is where the shaman leaves his body to go to the spirit world, and where one departs this world at the moment of death. It also secretes trace amounts of the chemical DMT, a psychoactive compound also found in many hallucinogenic plants used in shamanic rituals, such as ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms. DMT is considered the primary ingredient in these plants producing the hallucinatory effects.

It seems though that taking psychedelic brews is not the only way to stimulate the pineal gland; it is also highly receptive to sound.

“Activation of the pineal gland is accomplished when high frequencies cause the fingerlike gland to vibrate at a rapid speed, like the flickering tongue of a serpent. When kundalini rises up the spine from the root chakra, it too stimulates this ‘finger’ to stand poised like a cobra. This unblocks the passage between the ventricles of the brain and unites the chemical flow of energy between left and right hemispheres, linking the subjective and objective states of consciousness—the visible with the invisible (italics mine) (Hall 1932; Goldman 1992).
As the pineal vibrates faster, it creates a kind of temporary shielding from the pull of gravity, offering consciousness a window through which to connect with the fourth dimensional state. We often experience this liberating effect when we travel to extraordinary and faraway places during sleep.”

Suitable frequencies can be made with the human voice, as in Gregorian chants or the overtone singing of Tibetan Buddhists, but there are a number of musical instruments whose sonic properties can also realize this effect, on the player as well as a listener. In the southeast Balkans, notably Albania, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, there is a type of flute of ancient provenance called the ‘dvojnice (‘dvoy-nee-tse’). Really it contains two flutes carved from one piece of wood; each tube has a separate mouthpiece and finger holes, but they are meant to be played simultaneously. (See fig. 5.) The musical scale of the finger holes gives approximately the same notes, but not in any standard equal-tempered intervals. The typical means of measuring out the space between the holes (and thus the intervals) consists of the maker holding two fingers at a 90’ angle across the flute; the distance from one hole to the next is thus ‘two finger-breadths.’ This means there is no absolute standard for the intervals, and every flute will have its own signature sound. The dvojnice generally has only 4-5 holes, so the scale covers an interval of about a fourth, from say, A-D or the first notes of a Major scale.

When played, the two flutes-in-one are played together but not in unison; it is played in counter-melodies, or what is called ‘polyphony’. When one melody rises the other may descend, or one may hold a drone while the other moves around it. A singular feature of the dvojnice’s special sound is the dissonances created by these polyphonies. No matter where the phrase of each pipe rests, the other will land on a note giving an interval considered ‘unharmonious’ by the Classical rules of harmony. Parallel seconds (G-A, E-D, etc.) are the order of the day in this music, where in more Western art music this interval is studiously avoided. The closeness of the notes creates a clashing of the sound waves, what is called a ‘beat pulse’. Imagine two rocks thrown near to each other in a pond; the two ripple patterns collide with each other and produce a third set of ripples. (See fig. 6.) In acoustical terms, the waves of the notes literally are ‘beating’ against each other, and a third note is created. As the two melodies maneuver, this phantom note moves with them in a third independent melody. In my own experience with the dvojnice, the phantom melody tends to have a low-pitched, guttural or hoary quality, no matter the pitch or tonal purity of the flute itself.

This rapid fluttering of the waves against each other, though, actually is a higher frequency, vibrating very rapidly, and is felt quite viscerally in the back of the skull (where the lower pitch of it may be more of a felt quality the reflecting the actual sound. My own educated guess is it has something to do with the vibrations of the waves through the skull bones). After playing a while, a rapid flicker is still felt in the general vicinity of the pineal gland, a sort of ‘buzz’ which can certainly be described as a ‘non-ordinary state of consciousness!’ In the Balkans, the dvojnice as well as a reed horn version called a mizmar are played at weddings and sometimes funerals “…with the idea that their loud and penetrating sound would magically protect the newlyweds from evil spirits.” Though in modern terms ‘magic’ is commonly taken to mean ‘a superstition for which empirical data can not be had,’ there is another way of understanding this belief.

In older times, when a person was afflicted with emotional disorders such as depression (melancholy, as it used to be called) or hysteria, it was common for that person to be regarded as being influenced by demons or ‘evil spirits.’ Nowadays science explains the causes of these ailments as due to neuro-chemical imbalances. Chinese medicine and Medieval European medicine as practiced by men like Paracelsus talk about the distempered humors. Note that distempered is essentially a synonym for unharmonious. The treatment methods may be at polar opposite, but the intent of treatment is the same: to bring the afflicted person back into a balance or harmony.

We can describe these ailments, no matter which diagnostic terminology, as a dis-order, a confusion of the neurological processes. Whether it is brain chemistry, right/left hemisphere synaptic misfiring, excess bile production, or the working of a malign spirit, still it comes down to a sort of mental snarl, an energy block preventing the normal orderly flow of neurochemicals, chi, what-have-you. Anyone who has ever really suffered depression, even a temporary state of ‘the blues’ can attest to the leaden, low-down, low vibration quality of it; just getting out of bed can seem to consume all of one’s energy, and thoughts seem to spin around and around in one’s muddied head. Considering that many traditions regard evil spirits as low-vibration entities, coming from the high material density of ‘inside the earth’, we can see why such states were thought of as demonically produced.

The beat pulse of the dvojnice is not simply an ‘in one’s head’ phenomena; the sound waves spread out into the air around it, into the ears of listeners and into their minds and heads. The high-vibrations of the pulse begin to permeate the atmosphere, setting up sympathetic vibration patterns. Where we to run these through Hans Jenny’s tonoscope to see the frequencies transferred into sand or salt, we would not likely see the classical elegance of the Sri Yastra, but rather something more dynamic and perhaps chaotic. That is, it would be in motion.

Back at our wedding party, the activity in the air and in the psyches of the revelers start to work together in a kind of synergy, and as the beats gather strength any lower-frequencies are disrupted, pockets of stagnant energy flows get broken up and released and there is an atmosphere of good humors, so to speak. A demon of depression, wandering in the murky recesses of a lower dimension would not for long be able to withstand such a raucous fluttering field.

Exorcism is not the only purpose for which this sound magic is used; at the same time the disruptive energies are driven away, human bonds are reinforced. The dissonant harmonies of the dvojnice also inform the vocal polyphonies of the south Balkans. When singing, each member of the chorus wraps one arm around the next person’s shoulder, the other hand over their own ear. In this way the vibrations of each voice can be viscerally felt by the next person in the circle; they are passing the sound one to the other. This is how they stay ‘in tune’, and the liberal use of close intervals and their beat pulses reinforce the physical connection. By placing a hand over one’s own ear, one essentially keeps the sound in one’s head; it makes each singer more sensitive to the feel of the overtones. It is not just the sound of one’s own voice, but of the vibrations passing into him or her from the other singers. The importance of this physical connection was noted by ethnomusicologists recording Albanian songs in the 1950s:

“Some recordings in this CD are ‘off mike’: the vocalists and chorus seem to be far in the distance. There seems to be good reason for this. On his recording expedition to Albania in 1957, Erich Stockmann, in order to obtain better results with several microphones, tried to change the set. But then soloists proved to be completely unable to perform their part when separated from the chorus, or when they had no more body contact to the other soloists (italics mine).

The same essential principle is at work in Korean shaman music, a genre called Sinawi. Here the beat pulse that seems so essential for stimulation of the pineal, or the opening of the spiritual gate, is produced by the interactions of an ensemble. In Korean music, a melody in itself tends to be fairly simple and a musician’s skill is judged by how well he ornaments and elaborates on it; to just play the tune straight is the sign of a poor player, for he is not bringing himself to it. A note by itself is treated more like a reference point, an event on a wave of sound that is ceaselessly moving. In Western music we tend to think of a note as the music itself; you play the note then move on to the next one. Asian music, from Japan to Iran, regards the note as only the audible part of the music; the aim of the players is to reveal the music itself, to bring out the motion of the wave from the invisible to the visible, or audible as the case may be. In the context of this essay, really it is both we’re talking about.

To this end, ornamentation holds a place of utmost importance in the Korean art. The player has at his disposal a slew of different kinds of bends, slurs, slides, vibratos and plucking techniques to travel from one tone to the next. The manner of getting there shows the musician’s skill and imagination. Sinawi extends this principle to an ensemble setting; there may two or more drummers, a gong, wind and reed instruments, the Korean bowed haegum, and a komungo zither related to the Japanese koto. The shamaness presides over the proceedings, performing the ritual dance and singing. Sinawi uses a specific set of melodic formulas, in a manner similar, in principle, to the Indian raga, but here each member of the group embarks on his own interpretation of the material. They do not play with each other but more at the same time as each other. The effect comes across at first listen as sheer chaos, but soon one begins to discern subtle cross-rhythms. This seems to have a two-fold purpose; the apparent noise captures the ear which, searching for some pattern, focuses its attention more carefully. However, it can not bend the music to its own normal mode of understanding; a certain submission occurs, an engagement to the conduct of the music itself. Thus through the senses a psychic web is created that distracts the mind of the listener from itself.

The second angle of attack, if you will, is the effect of the music on the atmosphere around it. As with the dvojnice, the dissonances set in motion by the group start to coalesce into a synergistic vibration field, building on its own momentum. All the different bent notes, slides and slurs moving in all directions create an audible sonic wobble that spreads out from the center of the performance. So the music works on two fronts at once; the interiority of the listener and the exterior ‘mood’ of the air-space around the whole, achieving essentially the same end as the dvojnice’s fluttering beat pulse. Stagnant energy inside and out is broken down and released, and a harmonious flow is restored.

We can describe the two poles of approach to this end as, on one side the discords of Balkan polyphony and Sinawi; on the other, the more refined, elegant, structured frequencies expressed in Chladni diagrams and Jenny’s ‘cymatics’, which are analogous to the Classical Hindu ragas, Persian dastgahs, and Chinese music for the guqin lute. The sounds are very different, but the aim is still the same; to clear out the ‘evil spirits’ and purify the spiritual and physical bodies of mankind through reconnecting the individual to the Divine Harmony.

This is far from a thorough survey of this subject; my intent here has been to locate one of many possible starting points for research. Of all the areas of intersection between ‘ancient wisdom’ and modern science that have come to light in the past 40 years or so, the links between shamanic and ritual music and modern physics is only beginning to be explored, and even just one musical tradition could provide fodder for an entire book on the subject. In closing then, I give an account by the English diplomat and archaeologist Austin Layard of a religious ceremony he attended, in 1846, of a sect known as Al-Yezidi in Iraqi Kurdistan, which includes many enactments of what we have discussed:

“Layard watched as large numbers of sheikhs,qawwals…fakirs,…as well as numerous women priests attired in white, began to assemble in the inner court for…the climax of the Jam festival. The qawwals played sweet melodies on flutes and tambourines, which grew steadily in pitch and intensity. Accompanying the pleasant sounds was a slow choral chant that radiated from the men on the surrounding slopes. This continued unabated for over an hour, the pitch hardly varying at all. Occasionally contrasting harmonies would emanate from the cacophony quickened its pace and volume, until finally it blended to become an eerie wall of harmonic sound that seemed to hang motionless in the air.
The tambourines were then banged louder and louder as the flutes were played with ever more ferocity. Voices were raised to their highest pitch, while women warbled a strange low shrill that seemed to make even the rocks reverbrate with constant sound. Overcome by the ecstasy of the highly charged atmosphere, the qawwals began to discard their instruments as they started flinging themselves around in wild trances, induced by the almighty crescendo of noise. Each fell to the ground when their body could take no more.
And then the focus of their ritual was made apparent to the chosen few for the first and only time that day. In the inner court, a sheikh delicately clasped an item in a red cloth coverlet, something…of immense spiritual significance to these people.
…in his hand was a strange statue of a bird, made either of brass or copper. …Its name was Anzal, the Ancient One, the embodiment of Melek el Kout, the Greatest Angel, whose presence had now been summoned.

One statement I find especially interesting in this account is how the chant “…seemed to make even the rocks reverbrate with constant sound.” This brings to my mind one of the legends surrounding the ancient Greek musician Orpheus, whose beautiful lyre playing was said to charm wild beasts and “…make rocks/ weep and trees/ toss down/ their branches/…” After our examination of music in light of the discoveries of Chladni and Jenny, is it now so far-fetched to wonder if maybe those myths were in fact speaking truthfully? What secret mode did Orpheus play, and what wonders could we work on our own wounded selves and environment today if we knew how to play in that key?

(Note: I'm not so good at this blogging thing yet, so my illustrations did not copy over. If you google the key words where it says "see figure..." you will easily find them. In the future, I will have a better grasp of how to work this confounded thing!)
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Discography

Albanian Village Music/Musika Fshatarake Shqiptare. Heritage CD HT CD 40, 1930 England: Interstate Music Ltd., 1998.

Apocalypse Across the Sky: The Master Musicians of Jajouka Featuring Bachir Attar, 314-510 857-2, New York: Island Records, 1992.

Bosnia: Echoes From an Endangered World, CD SF 40407, Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1993.

Folk Music of Albania, TSCD904, 1964. London: Topic Records, 1994.

Four Thousand Years of Korean Folk Music, CD 438, Pismo Beach: Legacy International, (no date given).

Nguyên Vinh Bao Ensemble, Pièce 1275, Paris: Ocora Radio France, 2002.

Samulnori-“Record of Changes” CMP CD 3002, New York: CMP Records, 1988.

Vranisht: Kenge Polifonike Läbe, 332018, Langon, Fr.: Daquí, 2003.